S Korea pushes for talks with North on Kaesong

AFP, SEOUL

Fri, Jul 05, 2013 - Page 6

South Korea yesterday proposed talks with North Korea on reopening a shuttered joint industrial zone following months of high military tensions.

The proposal came a day after the North restored a cross-border hotline and announced it would let South Korean businesspeople visit the Kaesong estate to check on their closed factories.

The South’s Unification Ministry sent a message to the North suggesting a meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom tomorrow, spokesman Kim Hyung-seok said.

“The two sides would be able to discuss the issue of checking on facilities and equipment ... and the issue of reopening the Kaesong industrial district,” Kim said.

There was no immediate response from the North. Plans for high-level talks last month on the future of the estate, which has been shut since April, collapsed due to a protocol dispute. The Kaesong estate, where 53,000 North Koreans work in 123 Seoul-owned factories, is the last remaining symbol of cross-border reconciliation and a valuable source of hard currency for the impoverished North.

It was the most high-profile casualty of the months of elevated tensions that followed the North’s nuclear test in February, and subsequent tightened UN sanctions.

After repeatedly threatening Seoul and Washington with conventional and nuclear attack, Pyongyang in recent weeks appears to want to shift to dialogue.

Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, said the North was likely to respond positively to yesterday’s talks proposal, as it tries to improve its people’s living standards and attract foreign investment to special economic zones elsewhere.

Pyongyang is also mindful of a US demand that it improve ties with Seoul before any talks with Washington, said Koh Yu-hwan, another professor at the same university.

In an apparent bid to press it to talk, the North this week allowed a pro-Pyongyang paper to release a video and interview with an American sentenced to hard labor for alleged subversion.

Kenneth Bae appealed to the US to secure his early release, saying he has been in poor health since he was sent to prison in May to start a 15-year sentence.

“North Korea is seeking to exploit people’s sympathetic feelings for Bae to compel the United States to have talks with it,” Koh said.

“It wants to shift to dialogue from confrontation. However, unless the North takes concrete steps to meet its international obligations, it is hardly likely to nudge the United States toward the dialogue table,” he said.

North Korea has vowed never to give up its nuclear weapons, but says it is open to direct talks with the US. However, the US and South Korea say the North must take actions first to prove its commitment to abandoning its nuclear program.

North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan is currently on a visit to Moscow to discuss possible resumption of six-party nuclear talks stalled since December 2008.

Kim late last month discussed restarting the talks in Beijing, where he met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅).

Operations at Kaesong just north of the heavily fortified border came to a halt after the North banned entry by the South’s factory managers and other officials and pulled all its own workers out in April.

Its concessions on Wednesday came hours after dozens of South Korean firms threatened to withdraw altogether from the zone, complaining they had fallen victim to political bickering between the two rivals.

Representatives of the South Korean companies have repeatedly urged the two sides to open talks to revive the moribund industrial park.